As I indicated in a previous entry, I wanted to post some of the images that I used when delivering my Tolkien 2005 conference paper. That paper (without the images) is included in the proceedings now on sale by the Tolkien Society.

Back in 2005, my presentation, “Male Friendship in The Lord of the Rings: Medievalism, The First World War, and Contemporary Rewritings,” discussed the Frodo and Sam relationship in both medieval and modern contexts. I wanted to show that a tradition of male friendship, especially in war, stretches far back in time.

For example, just as Roland has his Oliver in the Song of Roland (here pictured in a 14th-century manuscript):

and Beowulf has his Wiglaf (by J.H.F. Bacon, c. 1910):

so too, Frodo has his Sam:

While I wanted to show how a tradition of male friendship can be traced back to the early medieval period (and I could have gone beyond that, of course, but I only had 20 minutes for my talk!), I also tried to place the Frodo-Sam relationship in a modern and contemporary context. I looked at the nature of World War One friendships, then at how Peter Jackson had portrayed Frodo and Sam in his films, and finally at how subsequent fanfic writers have generally represented the two.

But as I was thinking about the medievalized elements in Frodo and Sam’s friendship, I was struck by one moment in Return of the King when the two of them are near the end of their climb up Mount Doom. Consider this passage:

‘Help me, Sam! Help me, Sam! Hold my hand! I can’t stop it.’ Sam took his master’s hands and laid them together, palm to palm, and kissed them; and then he held them gently between his own.

At this point, Frodo and Sam are very close to the end of their climb. As the Eye moves to gaze at the Captains of the West, Frodo falls to the ground as if he’s “stricken mortally.” Sam is kneeling beside him. Of course, it’s completely natural for Frodo to ask Sam to hold his hand to keep it from reaching for the Ring around his neck. And it’s quite in keeping with Sam’s previous attempts to comfort his Master by holding his hands, as he does several times before this in various situations.

But the specific actions that are described here are also reminiscent of the medieval ceremony in which a vassal pays homage to a lord. Typically, the vassal places himself in a lower position than his lord by kneeling before him. He offers his hands in a prayer gesture, palm to palm, to his lord, who places his own hands over them as a sign that he will offer protection to his vassal.

From a 12th-century manuscript. Act of homage

On Mount Doom, Frodo is in the lower position on the ground and Sam is kneeling above him. Frodo offers his hands as a vassal would do, and Sam takes them between his own, as if he were the superior in the relationship. I find this reversal very telling. Sam has always directed his loyalty to his “Master,” acting as his servant. Now, Frodo is acknowledging Sam’s leadership role by putting himself into Sam’s hands, both literally and symbolically. He is becoming Sam’s man, as if he were a vassal pledging himself to a lord.

This reversal only acknowledges what has already happened in the story by this point. Sam has increasingly taken the lead in their journey and made decisions for both of them in his effort to protect Frodo.

The ceremony of homage between vassal and lord existed in many European countries and over centuries in the medieval period, so it should not be surprising that variations occurred. In my 2005 article, I interpreted the scene in the light of one of these versions, in which a vassal kisses his lord’s hands in the ceremony. Because it’s Sam who kisses the clasped pair of hands, I had read that as a sign of “a reciprocal exchange in which Frodo acknowledges the need for Sam’s leadership and protection, and Sam acknowledges his willingness to be both vassal and lord” (324). Since writing this, though, I’ve read that in some instances the lord did kiss the vassal’s hands and in others, the kiss did not occur until an oath of fealty was sworn after the homage ritual. In any case, some historians do point out that the ceremony of vassalage created a reciprocal relationship between the two parties, with equal demands on both sides.

Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth 1969.

However we interpret the details, I can’t help but see the basic homage ritual (hands clasped together and enfolded in another person’s hands) as reflected in this moment between Frodo and Sam. In that light, the scene looks forward to the time when Sam will become the Master of Bag End; in fact, to me it makes that conclusion seem inevitable.

Bibliography

The original article in the 2005 proceedings did not have a bibliography attached. For the sake of completion, you can look at the Works Cited list here [pdf].

A couple of weeks ago, my department held a reception for our students, and the event included a series of brief talks called “What I Did Last Summer.” Our intention was to introduce our work to our students and also to combat the popular misconception that professors have the summer “off.”

We wanted to give students a glimpse of what their professors do when they’re not teaching. The talks — which had to be under 10 minutes — described various tasks that we performed over the summer, from collective bargaining on behalf of the faculty union, to the writing of short stories, to doing research for articles and conference papers. I offered to talk about my research and conference trips to Oxford and New York, but the time limit was a challenge!

I’ve already written in this blog about my research trip to Oxford and my conference trip to New York, but in case you’re still interested, here is another version of the story; I’ve recorded the talk that goes with my slides. I hope this presentation gives some insight into the main ideas that are fuelling my work these days.

When I heard that a Tolkien conference was going to be held in New York City last month, of course I paid attention, as I find any reason to visit New York a welcome one. When I investigated further and saw the list of presenters — Janet Brennan Croft, Kristine Larsen, Nicholas Birns, Laura Lee Smith, Chris Vaccaro, Dawn Walls-Thumma, and others who kept getting added to the roster — I was convinced I had to go. The conference gave me a great opportunity to talk about my research on Tolkien’s art, and I was also pleased to be invited to participate in the Women in Middle-earth roundtable (more on my sessions below). Plus, as with most conferences, it was a chance to catch up with friends and meet new people.

Organized by Anthony Burdge and Jessica Burke, the conference featured Janet Brennan Croft as the Scholar Guest of Honour. Janet’s keynote, “Barrel-Rides and She-Elves: Audience and ‘Anticipation’ in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Trilogy,” started off the day’s proceedings. Janet pointed out the challenges that Jackson faced in making The Hobbit, which is supposed to be a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, but was made after what is supposed to be its sequel. Following me? If not, you can always look up a version of Janet’s talk, complete with diagrams illustrating the internal and composition chronologies of versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings,here.

Janet Brennan Croft, Scholar Guest of Honour. photo K. Larsen

Janet used Tolkien’s criticisms of Zimmerman’s screenplay as a way of discussing some of Jackson’s issues in trying to make The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings a seamless sequence, including problems of tone, audience, plot structure, and characterization.

After the plenary, it was time to disperse to various sessions. The conference call for papers had elicited so many presentations for this one-day event that the speakers had to be divided into four or five concurrent sessions for every timeslot. I found myself wishing that I could be in two or three places at any one time throughout the day. Luckily, two of the sessions were taped and posted online, so if you were in another room or just stayed at home, you can still listen to Dawn Walls-Thumma talking about “The Loremasters of Feanor: Historical Bias in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Transformative Works.” This link will take you to a page that also includes the text of her talk and the slides that she showed. The other taped session was “History and Technique: Sourcing the Arms, Armor, and Fighting Techniques of Middle-earth” featuring Rebecca Glass and Kat Fanning (if you follow the link, you’ll have to scroll down the page to their video).

Kristine Larsen in the Women in Middle-earth panel. photo C. Vaccaro

Chris Vaccaro talking about Beowulf. photo K. Larsen

I attended two regular sessions other than my own. First up was Kristine Larsen‘s paper, “‘While the World Lasted’: End Times in Tolkien’s Works.” Kristine talked about Tolkien’s references to the end of the world, mainly in The History of Middle-earth,The Fall of Arthur, and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, and commented on the prevalence of this theme in his work in the 1930s. Chris Vaccaro‘s presentation on “Affection Between Men in Tolkien’s Beowulf” took a look at the way in which a phrase from Beowulf, “dyrne longath,” has been rendered by many different translators, with interpretations varying widely: do the words refer to deep feelings? secret longings? affection? Chris looked at departure scenes in Beowulf and in Tolkien’s work in the light of this phrase.

Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien

It was certainly a day packed with ideas and events. I was part of the Women in Middle-earth roundtable discussion along with Janet Brennan Croft, Jessica Burke, Rebecca Glass, and Kristine Larsen. We had a free-ranging discussion about various characters, our first-time reactions as readers and/or movie-goers, and critics’ views of women in Tolkien’s works. One of my points (based on a lecture I had heard recently) echoed the concerns that Janet and her co-editor, Leslie Donovan, express in their recently published anthology, Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien — that any literary critic who wants to talk about women in Tolkien’s life and work should be informed about previous and current research on the topic. That doesn’t mean that they have to agree with other critics’ opinions, but they shouldn’t just repeat cliches or make statements as if they are the first to look into the question without investigating further. I recommend this book for its combination of older essays and new research for anyone interested in the topic of women.

I was scheduled to give my paper in the last regular session, and thankfully even near the end of a very full day some people showed up and offered interesting comments and questions. My presentation, “‘If you’re a vivid visualizer’: Words and Images in Tolkien’s Sub-creative Process,” extends some of the research that my colleague Jeff MacLeod and I have been doing on Tolkien’s artwork and his visual imagination and style. (We have one essay published, “A Single Leaf: Tolkien’s Visual Art and Fantasy,” and another one on Tolkien’s painterly style that has just been submitted to a journal). My basic question for this presentation was: what can a manuscript sketch such as the Tower of Kirith Ungol (still spelled with a “K” at this point) tell us about Tolkien’s process of composition? How do words and images interact in Tolkien’s drafting of the story?

Tower of Kirith Ungol sketch

You can find this image in Hammond and Scull’s book, J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, and in The History of Middle-earth, the Sauron Defeated volume. I’ve also been fortunate enough to look at a digital scan of the manuscript at the Marquette University Tolkien archive. In my presentation, I talked about the placement of the sketch on the page, the sequence of pencil and pen drafting, and the effect on the wording of Tolkien’s draft of the story at this point.

Here I am talking about Tolkien’s painterly style (though it looks like I’m demonstrating the height of Durin’s folk)

To set up the ideas for this manuscript examination, I showed examples of Tolkien’s artwork and talked about how he is a “vivid visualizer.” This opening quotation in my presentation title comes from “The Notion Club Papers,” an unfinished story that you can find in Sauron Defeated. In this time-travel story, Tolkien describes characters with different talents: some are vivid visualizers, others have a predilection for words and languages. Sometimes in the story those two abilities working together enhance the characters’ understanding. I talked about how a sketch like the Tower of Kirith Ungol shows this close interplay of words and images in Tolkien’s creative process.

To round off our busy day, we had one closing plenary session. A copy of the 2005 Ring Goes Ever On conference proceedings * was given to Baruch College librarian Chris Tuthill as a gift from the Tolkien Society’s Tolkien to the World program. Then we sat back and listened to the Minstrel Guest of Honour, John diBartolo and The Lonely Mountain Band, who provided some lively music to close out the fellowship of the day. You can sample their music from the links on the conference blog. By the end of it all, Anthony and Jessica’s question about whether they should make this a regular event was met with an enthusiastic yes.

Although the conference was only a one-day event, I did extend my stay in New York by a few days. Accompanied by my daughter, we took full advantage of the city: we visited museums (the Frick, the Guggenheim, a few galleries in the Met); we went boating in Central Park and walked on the High Line; we saw a play, Skylight; a musical, An American in Paris; a performance by the Alvin Ailey dance company; and we took advantage of free Shakespeare in the Park tickets to see The Tempest. Add to that a day of Tolkien fellowship — well, that’s not bad for a four-day trip.

*Among the many essays in the 2005 Ring Goes Ever On volumes donated to Baruch College you can find an essay by Kristine Larsen, “‘A Little Earth of His Own’: Tolkien’s Lunar Creation Myths” and one by me: “Male Friendship in The Lord of the Rings: Medievalism, the First World War, and Contemporary Rewritings,” which you can read here.

Please feel free to comment on your own experiences at the conference or to provide links to any other accounts of the event that you know of. Or just tell us your thoughts!

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I love Oxford. I have no idea what it’s like to be a student there or a member of faculty. I don’t know what it’s like to be a resident (expensive, I’m guessing, if I’m to believe Kirstie and Phil*). But as a visiting academic / tourist, I love it. This is where I can walk through medieval streets to the Bodleian Library, where over the years I have been privileged to read Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, Elizabeth Elstob‘s notebook and books, and Tolkien’s unpublished drafts and lectures. This is where I can stroll by the house in which Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings or order a beer in the Eagle and Child pub, which was a regular meeting place for Tolkien and his friends. The parks, the river, the colleges — they all make for a lovely sojourn in which the daily duties of the regular academic term can be traded for the pleasures of concentrated research.

I finally returned to Oxford, after more years than I could believe, for a week in June. Unfortunately, I could not schedule my research trip to take advantage of Peter Jackson’s visit to Oxford, which I missed by a couple of weeks. Oh well. I had plenty of other things to enjoy, such as the Bodleian Library’s Marks of Genius exhibit. Here, you can see Shakespeare’s First Folio, the Magna Carta, Blake’s Songs of Innocence, Mary Shelley’s journal, fragments of Sappho’s poetry, and so much more. But of course, a main attraction for me was Tolkien’s dust-jacket design for The Hobbit, complete with marginal notes to the publisher. It’s fantastic to be able to see some of Tolkien’s original artwork, as his pictures are under extra restricted access in the archive.

Stairs to the reading room, Weston Library

The Marks of Genius exhibit, which runs to September 20, is displayed in the newly renovated Weston Library, formerly known as the New Bodleian. This building has now been partially opened up to the public, with a wide-open entrance off Broad Street leading into a spacious entrance hall, shop, and cafe. Even better, the modern manuscripts reading room, where the Tolkien manuscripts are consulted, is just around the corner and up the stairs (you need a reader’s pass to get into this part of the library though **). I’ve written about the experience of working in the old reading room; I was not disappointed by the new one, which is a large space, with full-length windows between bookshelves all down one wall, and beautifully restored elements from the original 1930s building: a stunning carved wood ceiling, massive chandeliers at either end of the room, broad tables with a mix of re-upholstered old chairs and the newly designed Bodleian chairs. I was told that even some of the wastepaper containers were refurbished wood. Another welcome addition is the Headley Tea Room for staff and readers — when hours of squinting at Tolkien’s handwriting was taking its toll, I could pop down to the Tea Room for a stiff Americano to wake me up and fuel a few more hours of manuscript transcription.

On the way to the Library

What I was mainly reading during this visit were Tolkien’s lectures and notes on Old English poetry and versification. I’m interested in Tolkien’s verse drama, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, which he wrote very carefully in alliterative meter. It’s fascinating to follow the evolution of this play from its earliest drafts, when Tolkien was playing with the Battle of Maldon story initially by writing in iambic meter, then switching to alliterative verse. I’ve given conference presentations on this play a few times already, pointing out how scrupulous yet creative Tolkien was in his use of the meter and how he used his retelling of the story to work out some scholarly and poetic ideas of his. It’s now way past the time when I should have produced a final written version of my ideas, and I hope I’ll be able to report soon that an article will be forthcoming.

Looking towards the Radcliffe Camera (part of the Bodleian Library)

While in Oxford, I was also thinking a lot about Tolkien’s unfinished story, “The Notion Club Papers,” partly because I was looking ahead to my talk at the New York Tolkien Conference, where I was going directly from Oxford and where I was going to talk about the story. Whenever I can, I like to stay at a bed & breakfast at 100 Banbury Road, not only because it’s a nice B&B just around the corner from Tolkien’s former home on Northmoor Road, but also because Tolkien mentions that address in “The Notion Club Papers.” (I’m still puzzling out why that particular address).

This is an unusual story for Tolkien because it’s set in twentieth-century Oxford and features a group of men who meet regularly to read and discuss their work, much like the Inklings did. Even so, it features strange visions, new languages, time travel, lots of talk about dreams and myths, bits of Old English. It’s fun to stand in the same place as the characters and look at the same landmarks, such as the Radcliffe Camera. Most of my photos of Oxford were taken on sunny days, but one particular day that threatened rain seemed the perfect moment to envision the storms and “great wind” about to sweep over Oxford in “The Notion Club Papers.”

Most of the time, though, the weather was fine, and after a satisfying day at the library, it was a pleasure to take leisurely paths back to my hotel through University Parks or around Christ Church Meadow. The week, of course, went by far too quickly.

*Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer are the hosts of the TV show Location, Location, Location. Yes, I am a fan of real estate shows, and especially this one, which lets me peek into British homes. [back]

**If you’re interested in doing scholarly research in the Bodleian, you should look at the Library’s information page about getting a reader’s card. To work with Tolkien’s manuscripts, you’ll also need permission from the Tolkien Estate lawyer; the Library staff can advise you on this matter. [back]

Today, March 25 (the date of Sauron’s downfall) is Tolkien Reading Day, which originated with the Tolkien Society and finds readers around the world. The Tolkien Society has chosen “friendship” as the theme for 2015.

I hope you will read some Tolkien today. The theme of friendship can be explored in many ways in Tolkien, but if you’re interested in reading more about Tolkien’s handling of male friendships, you can take a look at a couple of articles I’ve written about the subject. The first is titled “ ‘Oh…Oh…Frodo!’: Readings of Male Intimacy in The Lord of the Rings” which was published in the scholarly journal Modern Fiction Studies in 2004. If you have a library subscription to Project Muse you can get it that way, but it’s also available on my Research webpage, or as a pdf download from the link above.

Both of these articles place Tolkien’s representation of friendship in the context of World War I writers and include a look at contemporary fan fiction as an extension of some aspects of that.

A more recent piece has been published in a book edited by Christopher Vaccaro titled The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on Middle-earth Corporeality (McFarland, 2013). My essay, “Frodo’s Body: Liminality and the Experience of War” focuses on the psychological and physical state of Frodo, once again in the context of war writing, but it also includes a look at the role of his friend Sam. The link above will take you to the pre-publication version of the essay.

Each year, the Association of Atlantic Universities sponsors a Teaching Showcase, a conference on a specific theme dealing with teaching and learning. This year’s conference theme at Mount Allison University in Sackville New Brunswick was “Assessment: Teaching, Learning, Quality.” As always, the conference provided plenty of opportunities to reflect on what I do in the classroom and to come away with new ideas. I also gave a paper on a project that I regularly assign in my introductory English course and that I think works very well in making students assess their skills and learn from each other. Following is the published abstract of my presentation; the full program and abstracts of other presentations can be found on the AAU Teaching Showcase 2013 site. Proceedings from previous years are available online.

Most literature instructors want their students to read closely, to write clearly, and to learn how to revise, as well as to participate in class discussions or to give oral presentations. I will present a two-part assignment developed for first-year English students that works towards all of these goals. The first part consists of a conventional written analysis of a short story. In the second part, students select and rehearse a portion of their chosen story to read aloud to a small group before writing a reflection on / review of their own and another person’s performance. The voicing of a passage requires that students pay attention to the author’s words rather than silently skim the text. In preparing for their readings and listening to their peers, students learn about different and often subtle new interpretations of a closely analyzed portion of a story. The final reflection / review allows students to revise their previously written analyses in the light of these new ideas, to become more aware of techniques of oral presentation, and to assess honestly how well they and others handled their own readings. I will present the guidelines that I give to students at all stages of this assignment and illustrate with examples from student writing the kind of peer learning and self-assessment that can take place. This assignment is most relevant for literature and language students but may be applicable in other disciplines that require oral presentations and the comprehension and interpretation of literary texts.

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In my previously posted thoughts on Tolkien’s The Fall of Arthur, I predicted that the character of Guinever would give rise to a lot more discussion, and we are seeing that debate occurring already on several sites. Troels Forchhammer, who has listed a thorough collection of reviews on his blog Parma-kenta, has added his own thoughts on the poem in three installments. In one of these, “Philosophizing on Fall of Arthur” he comments on three issues that are garnering attention: the connection of Fall of Arthur to Tolkien’s Silmarillion mythology; Tolkien’s view of the Arthurian source material; and the character of Guinever.

Troels Forchhammer excerpts a number of comments from reviewers pointing to Guinever’s negative characteristics; at one extreme is the view labelling Tolkien’s picture of Guinever as misogynist. Troels disagrees, and I think he’s right.

What makes the portrait of a character misogynist? I would say that a misogynist writer sees women in the light of the traditional virgin / whore stereotypes: women as completely virtuous and/or women as completely evil temptresses. Real people, of course, are a combination of good and evil tendencies in varying proportions. In The Fall of Arthur, Guinever is, let’s face it, no angel, but she isn’t a stereotypical character either. Just because Tolkien gave her flaws (some of which are inherited from the source material) doesn’t mean it’s a misogynist portrait. That would mean that no writer could ever admit a woman had faults without being labelled a misogynist! Equally problematic would be a writer who treated all women as being virtuous angels. Neither approach portrays women as real people, only as stereotypes at one or the other extreme end of the spectrum.

Tolkien’s Guinever, in my view, is a more complex character than just the evil seductress who destroys what men have created. Yes, she is greedy, stubborn, and selfish, but she’s also clever, fearful, sad. She is capable of arousing pity in the reader, even admiration — think of how she escapes Mordred’s lustful demands and removes herself from a precarious political and personal situation. Tolkien doesn’t spend a lot of lines on Guinever in the cantos that we have, but the lines he does give us suggest an interesting character who is not a simple stereotype.

It can be difficult making judgements about Tolkien’s work: on the one hand, you might feel inclined to defend Tolkien against all criticisms. On the other hand, you might fall into one of the old critical commonplaces that have been used to attack Tolkien: that he writes juvenile literature for boys, that he doesn’t write about women at all, that he writes misogynist portraits of female characters. I hope I haven’t fallen prey to the first temptation, but I do think a lot of work remains to be done in examining afresh Tolkien’s views and his characters.

I am pleased to announce that The Body in Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on Middle-earth Corporeality, edited by Christopher Vaccaro, has been published and is now available for ordering. I am also very happy to see that my essay in this book (“Frodo’s Body: Liminality and the Experience of War”) is in such great company! See the table of contents below.

About the book: (from the publisher’s website).
The timely collection of essays is thematically unified around the subject of corporeality. Its theoretical underpinnings emerge out of feminist, foucauldian, patristic and queer hermeneutics. The book is organized into categories specific to transformation, spirit versus body, discourse, and source material. More than one essay focuses on female bodies and on the monstrous or evil body. While Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is central to most analyses, authors also cover The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and material in The History of Middle-earth.

Contents:

Introduction. Christopher Vaccaro.

Part I. The Transformation of the Body
Verlyn Flieger, “The Body in Question: The Unhealed Wounds of Frodo Baggins”
Yvette Kisor, “Incorporeality and Transformation in The Lord of the Rings”
Anna Smol, “Frodo’s Body: Liminality and the Experience of War”

Part II. The Body and the Spirit
Matthew Dickerson, “The Hroa and Fea of Middle-earth: Health, Ecology and the War”
Jolanta N. Komornicka, “The Ugly Elf: Orc Bodies, Perversion, and Redemption in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings”

Part III. The Discursive Body
Robin Anne Reid, “Light (noun, 1) or Light (adjective, 14b)? Female Bodies and Femininities in The Lord of the Rings”
Gergely Nagy, “A Body of Myth: Representing Sauron in The Lord of the Rings”

Part IV. The Body and the Source Material
James T. Williamson, “Emblematic Bodies: Tolkien and the Depiction of Female Physical Presence”
Jennifer Culver, “Extending the Reach of the Invisible Hand: A Gift Looks for Gain in the Gifting Economy of Middle-earth”
Christopher Vaccaro, “Tolkien’s Whimsical Mode: Physicalities in The Hobbit”

[Can there be spoilers in an Arthurian tale? I don’t know if my review would count as a spoiler, but if you’re worried about such things, you might want to proceed with caution.]

In a darkening world, tides are flowing fast and winds sweeping into the west while ghostly apparitions ride through the skies. Tolkien’s long-awaited poem, The Fall of Arthur, presents a world veering towards the end of an age – after Lancelot and Guinever’s affair, after the breaking of Round Table allegiances – as Arthur and his loyal Gawain journey to make war in a mission clearly doomed from the start, “a last assay / of pride and prowess” (I. 15-16).

As John Garth points out, the story alternates between big scenes and close-ups. We see large battle vistas – “In the foaming sea flashed a thousand / swift oars sweeping” (IV. 172-3) – as well as striking individual moments: Mordred rushing up the stairs to the queen’s bower and taking in the sight of her while she, proud and fearful, pretends not to see him; or the exiled Lancelot, looking out to sea and half hoping that Arthur will call for his aid – and half hoping that he won’t.

Do not look for romantic courtly love in this tempestuous world. The affair between Lancelot and Guinever is in the past, and their last parting, seen in flashback, is strained with pain, sorrow, anger, and regret as Lancelot restores the queen to Arthur in the hopes of regaining his honour and his king’s love, and Guinever departs “With searing words” (III. 102) leaving Lancelot feeling hopeless. Their alienation from each other is deftly suggested as each seems strangely altered to the other.

Meanwhile, Mordred is consumed with lust, not only for the queen but also for the chance to wrest power and glory for himself. Gawain, ever loyal to Arthur, is contrasted with the conflicted Lancelot who is much like the exile in the Old English poem “The Wanderer”: “On that knee no more, knight in fealty/ might he hilt handle, nor his head there lay” (III. 116-17). And consider Guinever, rescued from burning at the stake, handed over to Arthur by her lover Lancelot, forgiven and restored as queen if only to avoid further national conflict, and in immediate peril of being seized by Mordred in his bid for power. In her we see a woman who is greedy for love and glory, dissatisfied with her present lot, and extremely clever in negotiating her precarious situation. There is much more that can and will be said about these characters by Tolkien readers and scholars.

Throughout, Tolkien’s descriptions evoke painterly images depicted with a few strokes of light and colour and shape. Take, for instance, this description of morning: “Beams fell slanting through the boughs of trees/ glancing and glimmering in the grey forest;/ rain drops running from rustling leaves/ like drops of glass dripped and glistened” (IV. 21-24). And here, a description of the seashore: “Fair wind came foaming over flecked water,/ on gleaming shingle green and silver/ the waves were washing on walls of chalk” (IV. 47-49).

All of this comes to us in an alliterative poem composed in the meter of Old English verse (and similar to Old Norse and some later Middle English poetry). In my recent presentation in Kalamazoo, I spoke about “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son” as an alliterative tour de force in which Tolkien demonstrates how alliterative meter can achieve various effects and styles in Modern English. When Tolkien writes a Modern English alliterative poem, he does not merely sprinkle into his lines a few alliterating words (that is, words beginning with the same sound) in order to gesture towards the older style. Instead, he carefully composes in the rhythmical verse types and alliterating patterns that were thought to constitute the choices of early medieval English poets. Like “The Homecoming,” the Fall of Arthur does not disappoint as a modern alliterative poem. (Curious fact: both poems contain the words “Wild blow the winds of war in Britain” – I feel another conference paper coming on!).

An appendix in The Fall of Arthur includes an excerpt from one of Tolkien’s lectures on the features of Old English verse, such as inverted syntax and parallelisms, which can sometimes be difficult for readers who are unfamiliar with the style. For best effect, read the verse aloud (or listen to it with your inner ear) and let the natural rhythms of the words be your guide. This alliterative verse style does not require the same number of syllables per line, in the same rhythmical pattern line after line, as in later English verse. Tolkien does write long segments of enjambed lines, piled high with parallel phrases, but he also knows how to punctuate such sections with short, forceful statements: “Strong oaths they broke” (III.62). And while alliterative lines can often seem slow and convoluted, Tolkien also knows how to change the pace: “Beacons were blazing, banners were lifted,/ shaft rang on shield, and the shores echoed./ War was awakened and woe in Britain” (IV. 161-3).

Readers familiar with medieval literature will recognize the dangers of putting one’s faith in Fortune, who will turn her wheel when you least expect it, and they will know that the traditional medieval beasts of battle – eagle, raven, wolf – who circle the action from the very beginning only presage war and slaughter. How Tolkien’s content and style relate in more detail to the medieval texts that were his inspiration is a larger question. In the extensive commentary provided in this volume, Christopher Tolkien discusses the poem’s relation to the Arthurian tradition and to the Silmarillion material, as well as the evolution of the poem. There is much to digest here that will take more time.

What I can say for now is that the line “Here ends The Fall of Arthur in its latest form” came as a shock followed by an immediate wish, if only Tolkien would have given us more.

Like this:

“What has a Woman to do with Learning?”* That was a question that Elizabeth Elstob had to deal with in her lifetime (1683-1756), as her study of languages and of Old English in particular existed in precarious circumstances relying, it seems, on the support and encouragement of her brother William and a few friends. Even so, she proved to be a formidable Anglo-Saxonist, with publications appearing between 1708 and 1715, including one of AElfric’s homilies, a spirited defense of the study of “northern antiquities”, and an Old English grammar, the first such grammar to be written in Modern English.

It seemed appropriate to invoke her spirit on the first day of my Old English course. Wouldn’t she have been pleased by the sight of us! — half a dozen women sitting in a seminar room as registered students in a university, with a female professor. Of course, as a woman Elstob could not have become a university student in her day, let alone a member of the faculty. Nevertheless, she admired and encouraged women’s learning, and wrote of the pleasure and satisfaction that she received from the study of Old English. In fact, she wrote her grammar so that she could “invite the Ladies to be acquainted with the Language of their Predecessors” (vii). Well, last week I was inviting the Ladies in front of me to do just that in an eight-month course on Old English. And while Elizabeth Elstob looked to the Anglo-Saxon past to connect to a tradition of admirable women, for us Elstob herself serves as a foremother and a reminder that the rights so many of us take for granted were denied to so many before us. In fact, I teach in an institution that began as a women’s university, which became in 1925 the only independent women’s college in the British Commonwealth, the only women’s university established in Canada, and an institution that still maintains “an enduring commitment to the advancement of women.”

If only Elstob could have experienced such opportunities. After her brother William died, she was left with serious financial troubles, and she gradually disappeared from view, to be discovered many years later working as an impoverished schoolteacher. Her friends managed to get her a place as a governess in her final years, but she never had an opportunity to return to her Old English scholarship.

In honour of Elizabeth Elstob, then, I ask my students to find their own motivations for studying Old English and to remember always the hard-won right to university education for women that they enjoy and others have had and still have denied to them. I hope that some of Elizabeth’s pleasure and satisfaction in studying the language will be passed on to the women (and men) who study Old English with me.

*Elstob quotations are from the preface to An English-Saxon Homily on the Birth-Day of St. Gregory. 1709.